Left in Japan (PC-88) Super Mario Bros Special: A Special Kind of Bad

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Introduction​

Special, You Say?​

It’s pretty well known nowadays that Nintendo is highly protective of its IPs; besides a few mobile games, their franchises continue to stay strictly on their platforms, and there seems to be no signs of them ever branching out. Having said that, Nintendo in the 80s and 90s was a bit more experimental with allowing their franchises on other consoles and computers...for better or for worse. Plenty of these games for non-Nintendo platforms usually consisted of original games or ports of classic arcade titles such as Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. The most infamous of these was Hotel Mario, a terrible puzzle game, alongside the three equally infamous Zelda games for the Phillips CD-i. Also infamous were the educational Mario titles on the MS-DOS, heralding games such as Mario’s Time Machine, Mario is Missing, and Mario Teaches Typing, games that have no doubt caused at least one kid to cry at their sheer dreadfulness and deception.

One game you may not know, however, is Super Mario Bros Special, an official PC follow-up to Super Mario Bros. It may sound absolutely absurd, but it happened, and it was even developed and released by Hudson Soft (the same people who originally created the Mario Party games), albeit only in Japan and (maybe) South Korea. Indeed, Hudson Soft even made a trilogy of sorts on the PC, although the first two in this “trilogy” were just ports of Mario Bros with slight variations–Mario Bros Special, a game which mainly changed aspects of the level design, and Punch Ball Mario Bros, a game more fateful to the source material but only allowed you to kill enemies with what’s essentially a dodgeball. Hudson Soft also ported other Nintendo games such as Balloon Fight, Ice Climbers, and Excitebike, all varying in quality.

The Start of a Beautiful Friendship
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Super Mario Bros Special was released on the PC-8801, Sharp X1, and (maybe) the Samsung SPC-1500, the former two being Japanese computers, and the latter being a South Korean computer very similar to the Sharp X1. No ROM or even any pictures of the game exists for the SPC-1500 version; a magazine does entertain its existence, but it's not exactly confirmed. The version of the game that I’ll be playing is the PC-8801 version released in September 1986: It’s the far inferior version, but it’s the only one I can play. The Sharp X1 version, released in the same year, features a better color palette and scrolling mechanics, but I will be mainly focusing on the PC-8801. Regardless of the computer, however, both are less powerful than the NES/Famicom, which will explain the poor quality that I will soon discuss.

Gameplay and Levels​

What's Beyond the Screen? Who Knows...
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I need to get this out of the way first: This game does not have screen-scrolling. When you get to the end of the screen, the screen flashes black and then shows the next portion of the level. Not only is this disorienting but it also means that you can’t see what’s coming next. I can’t count the number of times I died after falling or running into an enemy and felt like smashing my head into the screen. To be fair, most PC games at this time couldn't do scrolling, but this port could have at least used the scrolling in the Sharp X1 version, which instead uses Zelda-like scrolling to make things a little less disorientating. Combined with this is the fact that Mario’s physics are jank in this game; he feels like a stack of bricks sliding around on a skating rink, leading to moments of too little or too much momentum with rarely any in-between. Because of this, regular gaps become life-threatening endeavors and standard Goombas or Koopas become souls-like bosses. It’s so bad to the point where the water levels are actually the best-feeling levels in the game despite needing to button mash in them now. This stiff movement is a far cry from the smoother gameplay in the original Super Mario Bros, so if you're used to that, you're likely not going to get used to this.

I called this game a follow-up rather than a port (even if it has the exact same story and layout as the original), and the reason is that each level is in some way different from the original. Some stages feel familiar, but others have entirely new designs. It’s in the same vein as Super Mario Bros 2: The Lost Levels, a game that didn’t change up the graphics or mechanics that much but instead added harder levels. If anything, you could technically call this the “true” sequel to Super Mario Bros. I do commend Hudson Soft for this, but it’s hard to truly appreciate due to the downright broken mechanics in some levels. For instance, in 2-1, there’s a spring you need to use to get over a wall and reach the flagpole, except the spring is completely broken and rarely works the way it should. Even the developers knew this, as there are invisible blocks you can use to get over instead; why they didn’t just remove the spring is beyond me.

Classified Torture Device
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Arguably a more egregious example is 4-3, where a second flimsy lift is needed to pass a large gap, except if you’re an oblivious player like me, you might notice that there isn’t any flimsy lift and now it’s impossible to pass the gap. As it turns out, you need to destroy a scale lift a bit before this section to spawn the flimsy lift and pass, and you’re basically forced to die if you don’t do this. This isn’t an intended feature either and things disappearing occur randomly throughout the game; Latiku disappeared on me twice.

Gone, Reduced to Atoms
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Alongside new level layouts, Hudson Soft also introduced new enemies and power-ups. The enemies, namely the Sidestepper, Fighterfly, and Barrel, come from previous Mario games like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros and only one power-up, the hammer, comes from these games. One power-up, the wing, allows you to fly (or rather swim) in the air. Hudson Soft also added new items that sort of act as collectables to encourage the player to replay the game and find them. These include the Hachisuke (the Hudson Soft bee, adds 8000 points), clock (adds 100 to the timer), and lucky star (an atom, kills everything on screen). These are neat additions and add plenty of novelty to the game, but they aren’t utilized as much as they should have been, and it’s a shame since they would’ve made the game far more interesting.

If You Jump on Them, You'll Die
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One last point to mention is the timer; normally the timer isn’t a big deal in Mario games, but here the timer is strangely faster than usual. Maybe this would have made for a fun challenge like the shorter timer is in New Super Luigi Bros U, but with the terrible controls, it’s simply just torture. There's also no warp pipes like in the original, so you're going to have to suffer through all 32 stages. Fun!

Presentation​

King Koopa?! What Have They Done to You?!
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You may have already noticed that this game doesn’t look that great; it has the same eye-burning effects as the Virtual Boy and even gave me a headache. The PC-88 is capable of eight colors, but likely as a measure to improve performance, Hudson Soft decided to only use four: black, red, yellow, and blue. Blue is usually used for the background, however, so for everything else, their only colors were the former three, which is why everything looks like it was soaked in a deep fryer. Many enemies also have red eyes because of this, further adding to the feeling of this game being set in some Mario hell. Hudson Soft tried to remedy this by using a technique called dithering: alternating pixels made to emulate more depth and differing colors. This does work in some areas, like for the trees and bushes, but it certainly doesn’t look that great in others like the enemies and Mario himself. Perhaps this technique looks better with the original hardware, but I can't test that. There’s another little graphical oddity with this game, and that’s the fact that sprites sometimes blend with the background elements, the most obvious of this being the castles. I thought this was just the emulator’s doing, but it turns out to be present on the official hardware too.

Looks Like Mario's Trying to Hide
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A little funny quirk about this game: The amount of lives technically only goes up to nine. Beyond that, unconverted hexadecimals start appearing. Maybe Hudson Soft thought that no one would make it beyond nine lives (or that no one would actually play enough to get there), but I think it’s still funny.

Above all, the music and sound effects actually sound pretty alright. Admittedly some parts sound a little too slow, but I think Hudson Soft still did a decent job emulating the original sounds, especially since it’s on completely different (and inferior) hardware. Everything else though? It’s rough.

Conclusion​

Cute Little Easter Egg
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I think it’s safe to say that Super Mario Bros Special is one of the worst Mario games out there, or at least the series's worst platformer. Sure, the music is okay, the story's the same as Super Mario Bros (rescue the Toads and Princess), and there are some neat ideas here and there, but the awful controls, glitches, scrolling, and graphics make for a dreadful experience. I don’t want to say that Hudson Soft didn’t put any effort into this game, but I think it’s clear that they didn’t put enough in, especially since some of their other ports do the job well. The PC-88 is capable of way better than this.

Funnily enough, I had to technically beat this 1.5 times since most ROMs of this game at 4-4 are completely corrupt and stop you from completing the level. Any person with still a crumb of sanity would take this as a sign to stop playing, but not me! I had to patch the game and start all the way at the beginning! Moreover, when I made it to 8-4 and beat King Koopa, the game corrupted again! But it’s fine. I already beat King Koopa. Princess Toadstool will just have to walk home alone (and judging by the end screen, I don't think I'm missing much).

Congraturations! You're Winner!
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But overall, if you somehow still want to experience this game, then get the NES romhack of it. It keeps Hudson Soft’s interesting level design while actually being a playable experience. You could also get the Sharp X1 version if you still want to try a PC version; it’s still bad but at least it won’t make your eyes bleed. The PC-88 version however? Stay away at all costs.

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

Thanks for the share, good review!

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

I have seen gameplays of this game and to say it is all nonsense of version because the game is very limited especially in the playable and physical, mediocre graphics by the standards of Sharp X1/NEC PC-88 and with a strange color combination despite the fact that the X1/PC-88 computer has 8 colors although the visual design is close to the original but does not impress much and not to mention that the performance works by amount of cycles instead of a frame rate limit, something like MS-DOS, but the music is close to the original game even though it needs a beat to make it sound the same as the base game of the Famicom/NES. In the end it was a nonsense of a version that should never have been on the Sharp X1 & NEC PC-88 and besides being Special it has nothing although luckily there is a port of the Arcade version of the original game (Vs. Super Mario Bros.) that is well worked despite the level design that is more challenging than the Famicom/NES version. By the way great review friend .

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

I recall that a couple romhacks (plus the flash game super Mario crossover) recreate SMB Special to make it actually playable

 

[retro8s]

i was playing Super Mario Bros Remastered and super mario bros special is part of the line of games to play. i have to say i like itt diffenrt enough from its famicom couterpartas well better off gameplay wise still like the orginal with mix change levels. the change leves make it more it own game which is not bad too

 

[juanchikbzmusic]

please review megaman games for d.o.s

 

[Ryderdog1332]

please review megaman games for d.o.s

I’ve never heard of this but it definitely looks interesting. Maybe I will in the future

 

[Don Patch]

Fascinating!
I kinda love how awful it is.

 

[CMR]

There is an SMB romhack that recreates this game on the NES. It's pretty awesome.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6067/